The Smart City Expo adds another year of growth and opens up to 'startups'

The Smart City Expo World Congress is warming up for another record-breaking edition, with a 30% growth in exhibition space compared to last year. The event, organized by Fira de Barcelona, thus maintains the expansive streak it registered a year ago, this time reaching 1,100 exhibitors and 850 represented cities, among which will be the Ukrainian ones, one of the fair's main guests since the beginning of the Russian attack. Some of the companies that will participate are Saudi Aramco, Axis Communications, Dahua Technology, Nvidia, Microsoft, New Murabba, Nova Cidade, Roshn Group, and Veolia.

With an eye on key sectors for the future of urban life, such as mobility, construction, and the blue economy, this edition of the Smart City Expo focuses on how to make cities more livable and ethical, without forgetting to gain in efficiency and sustainability. "We aim to establish a common strategy for urban innovation: improve well-being, create opportunities, and foster a better relationship with our planet and our communities. If we want to live better, we must change our way of life, leverage technology, innovation, and collaboration," says its director, Ugo Valenti.

From Tuesday, November 5, to Thursday, November 7, the smart cities fair will bring together more than 600 experts at the Gran Via venue to discuss the future of cities, before an audience of 25,000 attendees. Under the motto Live better, there will be talk of the change experienced in the South Bronx through the promotion of green spaces, sustainable economic development, and the equitable participation of residents, led by expert Majora Carter, an urban revitalization strategist who promoted the transformation of her native neighborhood.

Technology, even more so in times of artificial intelligence (AI), will play a prominent role with the vision of researcher Stephanie Hare, who will focus on data privacy, surveillance, and the ethical use of this new trend. The thread will be followed by sociologist and Princeton University professor Ruha Benjamin, specialized in the inequalities caused by advances, with a focus on their impact according to each person's origin.

Sustainability will also be present in the presentations scheduled by the Smart City Expo, with the participation of environmental activist Melati Wijsen. She was one of the founders of Bye Bye Plastic Bags, a youth movement to reduce plastic waste that she promoted when she was only 12 years old. Another speaker who will focus on the current climate emergency will be ecologist Felix Finkbeiner, founder of Plant for the Planet, an initiative that will allow the money raised from the sales of fair merchandise to be used to accelerate the reforestation of the Doñana National Park.

Precisely, the exhibition will reinforce efforts to reduce its environmental impact, with the recycling of fabrics used in the stands and the tons of carpets that cover the fairgrounds, as well as the donation of all the furniture used, such as benches, pots and wooden structures, which will be reused by schools, nurseries, museums and urban gardens.

A space just for startups

After the pandemic and having completed ten years, the Smart City Expo decided to create small exhibitions within its program, first the Tomorrow.Mobility World Congress, focused on mobility, and then came the Tomorrow.Building and the Tomorrow.Blue Economy World Congress, specialized in construction and the blue economy, respectively. The objective was to give identity to those economic areas that had a special contribution to smart cities with specialized talks and stands.

This year the exhibition has not added any new vertical, but has opted to give its own space to urban innovation startups, as other fairs do, such as the Mobile World Congress (MWC) with 4 Years From Now (4YFN). Thus, the Smart City Expo has created the Innovation Playground, where emerging companies will coexist with investors, governments, corporations and research centers. With an area of 1,000 square meters, a total of 81 startups will participate. It will be here where the Barcelona Tech Summit will be located, an event by Barcelona Activa focused on scientific-technological entrepreneurship and spin-offs, which reaches its third edition.